Must Read

Artist Pick of the Week: Michal Menert

April 28, 2015 By Sebastian Aguirre

Michal_Menert_APotW_WRR

After the release of his highly anticipated album Space Jazz and a show at Red Rocks with the Big Band, this week’s Artist PotW Michal Menert has been having a great month to say the least. Fans were teased with three previews and then finally given the gift of powerful electro-soul last week to a frenetic response. Recently, electro-soul has seen a bit of a revolution in sound so of course one of the godfathers of the genre had to stop by to see what’s good, and put us onto this new genre he’s trailblazing “Space Jazz.”

These days, Menert is chilling in the state that is the heartbeat of electro-soul, Colorado. Originally from Poland, Menert and family immigrated to Colorado in ’87 when he was five years old. A little while later he started running around with Derek Vincent Smith, and the two started a band called “The Freeze” along with friend Paul Brandt, citing influences from Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Roots. From an early age we can see the influence that hip-hop had on Menert, and has persisted through his musical career.

He helped finish up PL’s first album Taking Up Your Precious Time in 2004, with a rough period of life troubles following him in the mid-2000’s. Despite the hardships Menert continued making music, collaborating with Benjamin O’Neill on a never released project in 2007, and Paul Brandt on their album Half Color in 2008. In 2010, Michal released his first solo album Dreaming of a Bigger Life on the then recently established Pretty Lights Music label and debuted solo at Sonic Bloom that same year. Two years later we got another album Even If It Isn’t Right that showcased his polished sampling skill with classy electronic elements. Fast forward another two years, and we have the establishment of Super Best Records featuring some of the up and comers in electro-soul like Late Night Radio, JK Soul, and Krooked Drivers.

On to the album, Space Jazz is a 15-track collection that is so undeniably Menert. In the world of electronic music, there is currently so much saturation that the goal for many artists is simply to stand out. Menert’s sound is already defined, so he has the hard-earned luxury of refining, polishing, and then breaking through into his own class. We feel he’s done that on Space Jazz with tracks like “The Moon Bounce,” “Wormhole,” and “New Dawn” that capture the essence of Menert with the hip-hop meets Big Band style. On tracks like “Planet Tomorrow” and and “Lose Your Mind” we see the natural sounding leads giving way to extraterrestrial elements giving us this feeling of “liftoff.” Lastly, on songs like “High Orbit”, “Sweet Remorse”, and “Jettison” we are fully into outer space with eerie synths that give the feeling of floating in zero gravity. We hope you enjoyed the musical journey into the cosmos, and we recognize Michal’s commitment to a theme that could only be executed by someone with a decade’s worth of experience in the genre. Check it out below.